Re: game mechanics and RuneQuest

From: Sandy Petersen <sandyp_at_idgecko.idsoftware.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 96 19:26:11 -0500


Michael Schwartz
>Whether we use RQ2, RQ3, Aria, or something of our own creation, it
>is the Gloranthan milieu which we ultimately enjoy, not the game
>system.

        Is this true for us all? At first was it? I bought RQ because I knew about Glorantha from Nomad Gods. But I kept playing RQ because I liked the system. After a couple of years, the world once more began to surpass the system in importance.

        But the RQ game system has had a major impact on the evolution of Glorantha. Here are just a few ways in which I believe this has occurred.

  1. RQ has weak magic for everyone. Hence, Glorantha has extremely common weak magic. Earlier writings don't imply this -- it came about as a result of RQ's mechanics. But the fact that even a peasant has appropriate magic adds a lot of flavor to the world, I feel. Very few other games have such widespread magic.
  2. No character classes. If a system using character classes had been used for Glorantha, who can doubt but what it would bear little or no resemblance to its current form.
  3. RQ, unlike most games, makes it easy to create non-human PCs, even weird ones like griffins or giants. In addition, RQ non-humans are _significantly_ different from humans. The multiplicity and alien nature of Glorantha's nonhumans testifies to the usefulness of this particular RQ quality.

        There are others, but I don't have time for an essay on this now. Anyway, I'm not arguing that a different game system could not have served Glorantha, but it would have been a different Glorantha.

Sandy P.


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